Ammar Alwaely was working in the Al-Zaraee district with TheSun reporter Owen Holdaway when they came under fire by a sniper.

“At first I did not know what happened. I fell to the floor and could not turn around to see if Ammar was okay,” Holdaway told The Sun. “Crawling along to behind the vehicle, I eventually looked up and saw it had hit my old GoPro that I had given him just a few days earlier.”

Footage of the incident captured on Holdaway’s camera is heart-stopping. The bullet misses Alwaely’s chest by just a few millimetres and his GoPro explodes instead, sending shards of plastic flying into his face.

Alwaely was treated for minor wounds to his face, as well as dehydration. After being released from the hospital, he joked with Holdaway that he should buy him a new mountable camera in Erdil, a city outside the combat zone.

General Al-Sammi, commander of the area, told the two journalists that they were very lucky to have not been killed.